How to tell it's time Karin needs a hug.

About 7:15 last night I hit up Mass General. There had been intermittent shooting pain in my left ankle since I finished a run Tuesday; the goal was to secure an x-ray to ensure there were no fractures or tears.

The Walk-In Unit waiting room was empty. The receptionist looked so unthrilled at my entrance that she forgot to process my co-pay. The doctor came out to usher me in as if I had awoken him from a nap.

Thusly weary, Dr. Ollendieck, who vaguely resembled the actor Hugh Laurie, did not choose to engage in small-talk (hallelujah!). He gestured me up to the waiting table and listened to me recite the symptoms. He asked me to remove shoes and socks and watched me do so without comment. Then he took my foot onto his knee and ran his hands over the tarsus and talus bones, with fingers as light as a Fred Astaire slide. Squeezed each of my toes. Traced each protruding vein. All the time in silence.

Sound erotic? (Well, remember the Hugh Laurie scruffy-beard look-alike thing....and, anyone, the great foot-tickler?)

Yeah, not so much. His three grown children and wife smiled down at me from the photo above his desk. My socks had been pretty sweaty. But it was entrancing, Dr. Ollendieck's continuous, benign, smoothing hands. For several moments, I looked down as he concentrated first on the left foot and then on the right, as a comparison, feeling, searching. I couldn't look away, and couldn't think of anything to say.

A reason I quest for a companion, sometimes, is that I miss that bare-skin contact. Sure, a swooping kiss on the clavicle that leaves me kissing the crown of his head. Or something as innocuous as his fingers resting in the cup of my palm as we walk down the street. Or his hand moving from the stick shift to my knee, driving me home from the bar.

Sigh.

By the way, no x-ray was prescribed. Dr. O didn't find anything outwardly wrong.